"This Mr. Tyrrel," she said, in a tone of authoritative decision, "seems after all a very ordinary sort of person, quite a commonplace man."

In the old days, to my commonplace and unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never read me any of his manuscripts,[…], and therefore my lack of detection…

And something angered Tamara in the way the Prince assisted in all this, out-commonplacing her friend in commonplaces with the suavest politeness.

Finally he began to mutter some commonplaces which meant nothing particularly.

"MY dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker-street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could…

It is odd how easily the common-places of morality or of sentiment glide off in conversation. Well, they are "exceedingly helpful," and so Lord Avonleigh found them.